


Don't Look Me in the Eyes (Look Past Them)

by Drag0nst0rm



Series: Avenging Merlin [1]
Category: Merlin (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Cognitive Recalibration, Gen, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Mind Control, The Tesseract (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:29:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8014021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin's eyes are blue. It's not something anyone thinks much of. Why would they? It's not exactly an important fact.</p><p>(It's the most important fact about Emrys there is, but they don't know that. Not yet.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blue

Merlin's eyes were blue.

It wasn't something anyone thought much on. They were a rather startling shade, but after the initial comments, people generally had better things to think about.

Freya was different. She asked him when she was dying and perhaps not thinking too clearly If they'd always been blue. They were pretty when they were gold, she murmured, but she always thought when the gold faded that she'd caught sight of another color, perhaps just another shade of the blue, but a prettier one.

Merlin was confused.

Of course he was. It was understandable. But the thought tugged at him, and he looked in the lake for a long moment, wondering.

They had, hadn't they? Always been blue?

He wanted to ask his mother, but she was a long ways away and had been so sad the last time he saw her, and there was no one else to ask. Gaius would assume he was sick and make him drink something nasty, and Arthur would laugh at him. He didn't want to bother Arthur with anything so trivial. Arthur was important. He would do anything for Arthur.

He wouldn't have really left with Freya of course. He was just calming her down, that was all.

That was what he told Arthur when he reported the story. Arthur looked at him for a long moment before telling him that he had let him down. He had kept things from him for too long.

He flinched, eyes down. Yes, he had been bad, disloyal, he could see that now. "I'm sorry, my lord," he whispered. "I'll do better, my lord, I promise." He looked up pleadingly.

Whatever Arthur saw there must have placated him. He patted Merlin on the shoulder. "How could I say no when you're looking at me like that? You're forgiven, Merlin."

All was right in his world again. He put Freya aside. She was irrelevant.

He got hit on the head on occasion, on patrols or questing. But Arthur was always there right away, making everything better, taking the pain and distractions away with that warm blue glow. Everything was always so confusing after those times, but Arthur made everything better.

Everyone asked him why he was so loyal. Cornelius and Morgause and all the other horrible people who tried to hurt Arthur. Everyone wondered. It was something pondered and dissected by his enemies, desperate to find away to pull Emrys away from his king. They never saw the answer, though it was right in front of them.

Merlin's eyes were blue.


	2. Real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you strip away the magic, what's left?

He wondered, sometimes, if any of it was real. If he flung a goblet one day and hit Merlin on the head with it, would any of his loyalty, his friendship, his steadiness remain?

He needed something real. He'd thought he wanted respect, but that thought went out the window when he caught himself missing Merlin's old cries of dollophead and prat. He ordered Merlin never to call him 'my lord' again, but the boy just replaced it with other titles of honor without a single trace of sarcasm on his lips. In desperation, once, he'd ordered Merlin to insult him.

He had done so reluctantly, with horrified eyes.

Eyes like his mother's when she'd asked her son what was wrong. Eyes like when she had gone first to Gaius, then to Arthur, asking why her child's eye color, of all things, had changed. _Had he been hit with some enemy sorcerer's spell?_ she asked Arthur.

( _Had a spell gone wrong?_ she asked Gaius.)

_It was better,_ Arthur said steadily, than the pyre.

( _Wasn't it?_ he asked himself desperately. _Wasn't it?_ )

Hunith had begged him to take it back, saying she'd take her son away, they'd never bother Camelot -

Arthur needed Merlin. Needed someone he could trust, absolutely. Needed a friend. Needed - something. Anything. Anything but a father that was never satisfied and always demanded more blood. Anything but a Court Physician too scared to put a toe out of line. Anything but Morgana, fake as glass jewels after her return. (Or had she already been lost? Lost when her maidservant screamed in the pyre? Lost when she stormed into Arthur's rooms, dragging a manservant with bright blue eyes who had told Arthur her secret the night he had spilled all of his own onto the floor of Arthur's room, who had no time to bring her flowers anymore. _I won't tell,_ he promised her. _You've killed him,_ she screeched back.) Something real.

Merlin had been real.

Once.

(Merlin was knocked into a wall. Arthur killed the last enemy and rushed over to him. His eyes were blue. Deep blue. Dangerous. _Please,_ he begs. _Please._ And then his eyes lighten to the other blue, and he asks Arthur why he's crying, how can he help, how can he serve, and Arthur hates himself more than he's ever hated anything before.)

Morgana released the dragon. They set out to find Balinor. He turns out to be in Ealdor. Hunith's village.

_My son,_ he whispers, pulling Merlin close.

He is weeping as he does so. Arthur doesn't realize why until he sees what is sticking out of Merlin's back.

Balinor doesn't let go. He's singing something softly, some old dragonlord lullaby, and Merlin's eyes are every color at once, but it doesn't matter, couldn't possibly matter, not when there's so much red.

_Why?_ he asks desperately.

_Because I owed him this much at least._

_Father?_ Merlin asks weakly. And then, _Arthur?_

And then nothing at all.

Arthur used to wonder sometimes, if he stripped away the blue, if any of it would be real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The only person in this chapter whose actions I condone are Hunith and Merlin, and Merlin is mainly because his actions aren't his own half the time. I do not endorse setting dragons on people when they made you angry, I do not endorse mind control, and (more seriously) I do not endorse Balinor's solution for getting someone out of a bad situation.
> 
> That said, these characters refused to listen to reasonable solutions to their problems like trusting people or peaceful protest, so we ended up here. With a dragon. And a lot of dead people.
> 
> The next Avengers AU goes up tomorrow!


End file.
